I've got the muchies!

Last night I ordered the mr to come home with some chocolate chips and brown sugar so I could make these. He came, I did, we ate- they were delicious!!

So easy too and only take 4 main steps! You will need;

• 1 cup of butter
• 1 tsp. of vanilla
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 and 3/4 cups of flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 bag of chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 190
2. Mix together the butter, vanilla, eggs and sugar.
3. Add in the remaining dry ingredients, followed by the chocolate chips
4. Smooth into a baking pan (greased or foiled)
5. Cook for 15 or so minutes (best judged by your oven, but until nice and brown ontop)
6. EAT! especially best when eaten straight out of oven, all warm and gooey :)

Plus you can re-heat them in the microwave to add some extra gooeyness a few days later! Trust me though, these won't last a few days...

Enjoy and let me know how it goes if you try them!

Abiento x

I've got the munchies.

As a non dairy eater, it can be very hard to eat pizza. However when I discovered that a pack of 2 pizza bases in Asda is only 57p I decided to use ingredients that I always have lying about the house to make a Lucy friendly pizza!

Simply with tomato puree, some veg and meat of some kind you have yourself a yummy pizza- so simple! Plus if you're like me, then you'll love a ton of salad with whatever Italian food you eat! So pile it up!!

Plus- add some wine, a friend and make a night of it! Fantastic :)

Abiento x

I've got the munchies.

Over the weekend I semi moved into my friends parents house in a small surfing town on the north coast of Cornwall. Sunday night, Mike came for the night- we cooked dinner together, watched Michael Macintyre and had an early night :). We are both ill at the moment so a big bowl of  tomato pasta was perfect for us! Last night I decided to use up some of the leftover sauce and flourish up the same dish a bit.

Overall delicious and filling- plus I made a large portion so that I have some for lunch tomorrow! Here's my recipe :)

A handful of pasta
1 chicken breast
a handful of peas
1 large (and I mean BIG) mushroom
a few slices of chorizo (or salami, or other...)
some sort of cheese
tomato sauce (I used a tomato and herb store bought jar)
A handful of spinach plus another handful of rocket
Any salad veg that you like- I chose to use cucumber

Start by cooking off the pasta in a small amount of water, keeping it at a rolling boil and adding more water when necessary.

When nearly done, add the peas so that they cook with the pasta.

Meanwhile in a frying pan, cook off the chicken, followed by the mushrooms.

Drain the pasta and peas, replacing them into the saucepan. Add the tomato sauce and return to the heat. Chop up the chorizo and add that too.

In your bowl create a layer of salad then combine all the warm ingredients and pile up on top! Finish off with some yummy cheese :).

I believe that when it comes to Italian food, we all eat far too much of the carbs. The pasta in a pasta dish should not be the main ingredient, it should be about a third of it. So I tend to double most of the above ingredients (except for the chicken) to save some for another meal, then eat it with the salad. This way it is more nutritious, healthier and just as filling! This was a meal I really enjoyed and it was oh so simple. I love to just add lots of random veg and meat to a meal for a yummy combo. Next time I might try it with some kind of seafood as apparently cured and deli meats compliment seafood perfectly!

Enjoy and let me know if you try to make a similar dish! :)

Abiento x

I've got the munchies.

I like food. Me and my siblings like to joke that it's a family trait. "Oh yes, your definitely a Gregory if you like to eat!" "Us Gregory girls have all got big bums!" is the kinda thing you could have heard us say often.  However when you grow up living in a house with a vegetarian who is yeast intolerant, you learn to eat healthy. Plus then you yourself become lactose intolerant and boom half the worlds food is restricted from you. Luckily, over the last couple of years I have transferred from vegetarian to pescatarian, generally now only not eating beef and lamb. I have slowly come to like meat, and can now handle the odd bone or two. (Thank you South-East Asia!) And so my range of foods and cooking has become slightly more varied. It probably helps that I live with a ravenous carnivore.

Found here

But as I have been slowly losing weight, my always healthy diet has had to be focused slightly. I'm also now cooking a lot more for myself, particularly as I'm working less at the cafe and can't rely on two tins of tuna and tin of baked beans for the week. Fruit is now a staple in my diet also. Lots of it! I bought two packets of blueberries, a packet of frozen raspberries, 2 bags of bananas, a bag of oranges and a bag of apples last Friday. Plus a tin of pears and one of pineapple chunks. In the space of five days I have eaten all of that, spare for 2 bananas and an apple. Yummy! And as the weight loss comes off, and my experiments with food continue, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite meals and recipes.

Now, sadly, my ugly kitchen and the gloom of winter is going to make any photos I attach to these posts look depressing and rather unappetizing. So bear with me, and come back every Wednesday morning for another recipe :)

Abiento x

Learning to Cook

Saturday afternoon I spent 3 hours in the kitchen. I took on a couple of new recipes and loved it. Since moving out of the mr's mum's house in February I have done little cooking. Mike tends to cook, while I bake. However to begin with I had no motivation or care to cook. I lived off tuna and baked beans with lots of starchy carbs like bread, pasta and potatoes. Over the summer I lived off very little money, aiming, and managing, to save 100 pounds a week! This meant however that some weeks I only had 10 pounds for food, and often this left me with nothing for socialising or leaving the house at all.

Now that I am back to being a student, and not saving so tightly I have a bit more for food each week, and that means a suitable budget for buying extra food for cooking and baking! My cupboard has gone from bare and boring, to being full of the basics. Slowly, each week I have been stocking up on supplies and basic ingredients.

Other than collecting and saving online recipes, I have been working my way through the seasonal recipes of Sophie Dahls voluptuous delights, as I mentioned previously. So far this month I have tried Banana bread, lime and coconut muffins, chocolate and peanut butter bark and much more! As you can tell I prefer to bake desserts and sweat treats than conquer savoury dishes :) I leave that to Mike, and enjoy making dishes that I can pre prepare and eat throughout the week.

One of my favourite meals is soup. With a couple of pieces of crunchy toast and lathered in butter (or sunflower spread in my case!) However, other than tomato and basil, it is rare to find a good supermarket soup that doesn't include dairy as one of the key ingredients. Most soups are packed with cream, milk and butter to add flavour. This is quite annoying, and while I love tomato and basil to an extreme, it can get boring! So i decided to make my own :) I started out with a basic carrot soup, omitting the milk for soy milk. However I forgot Vegetable stock and it tasted revolting, so went straight in the bin! I love roasting carrots and parsnips throughout the week to eat with chicken, or on their own with some feta for a great and easy meal. So I always seem to have some about. I also often have coconut milk about as it is a great dairy alternative that I can add to curries and baking for a creamy, sweet taste. It is quite high in fat but very delicious!

So this week I googled a parsnip soup with coconut milk and found this one by Jamie Oliver. It got great reviews so I decided to give it a go, replacing the milk with coconut milk and the garam masala with normal curry powder. And I have to say, it is delicious!So,  if you are feeling hungry after reading this long and lengthy post then I recommend this filling soup! Why not do as I did and make it carrot and parnsip, by having 3 of each in the mix? :) Plus it's easy and great to freeze!

Abiento x

Yummy!

I'm going to attempt making this later on today :)

Wish me luck!

Abiento x

I wanna grab a spoon

The other day I watched that early episode of Friends where Ross is still depressed about his divorce with Carol, and Joey tells him that women are like ice cream. There are a billion flavours out there, and all he has to do is grab a spoon.....

Well, when I saw this, that's all I wanted to do. In the same way that on a bad day you eat Chocolate spread out of the jar and squirt the squirty cream straight into your mouth.

Image and by Cafe Fernando

Of course, you can only do all of the above if you don't have a lactose intolerance. Like me :(. However this scrumptious delight is dairy free, so I can eat it!! I love love love it when I find chocolate that I can actually eat!

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE (CHOCOLATE CHANTILLY)
Recipe by Herve This & Heston Blumenthal

Ingredients

4 servings

• 9.35 ounces (265 grams) bittersweet (%70 cocoa solids) chocolate, chopped (preferably Valrhona Guanaja)
• 1 cup (240 ml) water
• 4 tbsp sugar, optional

Method

1. Place a large mixing bowl on top of another slightly smaller one, filled with ice and cold water (the bottom of the large bowl should touch the ice). Set aside.
2. Put chocolate and water (also sugar and/or liquor if you’re using) in a medium-sized pan and melt the chocolate over medium heat, stirring occasionally.
3. Pour the melted chocolate into the mixing bowl sitting on top of ice and water, and start whisking with a wire whisk (or an electrical hand-held mixer) until thick. Watch the texture as you whip and make sure not to over-whip as it will make the mousse grainy. If the mousse becomes grainy (which is possible at your first try), transfer it back into the pan, reheat until half of it is melted, pour it back to the mixing bowl and whisk again briefly.
4. Divide into four serving cups and serve immediately.

Recipe by Herve This and Heston Blumenthal via Cafe Fernando

Abiento x